


Oh My Love (see my blood red for you)

by DreamsAreMyWords



Series: Clexa running down to the Riptide [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Clarke mourning her people, Clarke x Lexa, Clarklexa - Freeform, Clexa, Death, F/F, Lexa mourning Clarke, Mount Weather, Mourning, PTSD, Princess Commander, The 100 - Freeform, and everything that could have been with Lexa, commander princess, dealing with the aftermath of Mount Weather, suicidal thoughts tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 05:54:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3598872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsAreMyWords/pseuds/DreamsAreMyWords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set directly after 2x16. The Trigedakru are moving on but Lexa's heart lay where she left it: the bottom of Mount Weather, along with the girl she is sure she left to her death. Clarke, meanwhile, has left Camp Jaha, and her wandering has taken her to the place she is sure she left her soul: Mount Weather.<br/>Part 2 of the Clexa Riptide AU (AU involving fake dating, children, and Grounder!Clarke). Basically a lot of angst, emotional turmoil, and mourning. </p><p>           "The last drawing is of her own lips—slightly parted, plump, and there.<br/>There is a note hastily scribbled at the corner of the page, and Lexa is not used to reading such clearly written English after a lifetime of harsh Grounder scrawls, but after a moment, she makes it out.<br/>Hodnes laik kwelnes<br/>Just like that, Lexa is numb and bleeding again."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh My Love (see my blood red for you)

**Author's Note:**

> This was previously called "The Curve of your Lips (rewrite history)" before I decided to rename it for the collection it's in.  
> Art is mine, just used an editor online.

 "Come here close  
Almost enough to touch  
In and out  
You keep my in and out"      

* * *

                                                                         

            The  _Trigedakru_  are silent, eerily silent, more silent than Lexa has ever known. Those who had been held captive in the Mountain are still in too dark of a place to find their voices, and those who had followed Lexa into an almost-war are too consumed by their thoughts. Lexa can imagine what they are thinking, but she doesn’t want to. The guilt of abandoning those who had managed to grow on them like some kind of infectious, infuriatingly happy disease is suffocating, and the lingering feeling of betrayal—because even though she saved her people, the Commander is still a traitor, a liar, an oath-breaker—is enough to quail any inclinations to celebrate.

            The sounds of tents and huts being taken down, of pails of water quenching fires, of hundreds of  _gonakru_ sheathing their swords and axes and facing their leader with dull eyes and furrowed brows because they have never known a time of peace and they do not understand why they feel so tired at a time they always envisioned coming alive—

            Lexa stares back at them with steady eyes. She nods her acquiesce when they ask, she firmly orders when they require direction. Her people pack their things and follow as she leads them to presumably an unknown world. A world with no wicked fog that melts skin, no fearsome suited people with guns that sprout red lights. The childhood nightmares they had all grown up hearing, the monsters lurking in the dark that snatched up family in the dead of night, the villains who turned good people into empty husks of fury that fed on what had once been their own kind were no longer a threat. The deal had been struck, the  _Maunon_  would haunt them no more, and the  _Skaikru_  had fallen from the stars to be buried in dust.

            For once, Lexa is grateful that she is  _Heda_  and she rides at the front. All of her people are looking ahead and her back is turned to them so none can see the tears that have slipped through her defenses.

            Lexa imagines dirt and dust settling into blonde hair, and Lexa cries.

 ///

           Rain is slamming down in angry hissing torrents, and Clarke is on her hands and knees outside the bunker she and Finn had once shared. Memories of quiet laughs and pencil scratching canvas, of flickering light and shadows moving on the walls as Finn moved against her, into her, taste like ash in her mouth, so she chases them away with one of the dusty bottles of liquor that had been left in the bunker. Soon she can’t breathe. After crawling up from the bunker and landing on all fours in the muddy earth, she retches and sobs and thinks that the way her rain-drenched clothes cling to her cold skin still don’t feel quite as sticky as Finn’s blood on her hands had.

 

///

            Lexa’s people begin to stir, as though waking from a slumber. Those who had been prisoner begin to warm to loved ones that they had once decided were lost to them. Her people began to appreciate their victory rather than lament their losses. No one would dare to challenge her, and Lexa could see the questions in their eyes, but now they were starting to move on. The dead were gone. The living are hungry.

            Indra is not of the same mind. She cannot meet Lexa’s gaze, and Lexa cannot blame her.

            Lexa wonders if Indra is angry at Lincoln for betraying them all for a certain death, or if she is secretly relieved that he was free to choose his own path.

            Lexa wonders what Indra would say, if Lexa had not ordered her never to speak of it when she handed her the knife and told her to discreetly place it beside Lincoln. When Indra turned to leave the tent, Lexa could see another knife tucked into her belt, and knew Lincoln would have been freed regardless of her choice. Still, Lexa was relieved at what she had decided. If she had not, and Indra had been the one to do it, she would have had no choice but to punish her—to kill her.

            And Lexa has had enough of killing.

///

           Three days pass before Clarke manages to gather the courage to brave the Mountain. She figures that if she had been brave enough to return to the home she had briefly shared with the boy she had loved and killed, that she could take facing the place where she had killed those she had never known.

            She was wrong, of course, because at least Finn had been a man. It would have been harder justifying slipping a knife between his ribs had he been a baby, not that it would have made sense or even mattered.

            But here she is. Retching again, which probably isn’t good considering the only thing that has been in her stomach for the past four days is rain water and bitter alcohol. She came to bury them. Instead she is vomiting into a bowl of half-eaten oatmeal that rests beside a dead mother. Clarke knows she is a mother because her arms are still wrapped around the infant that has a tuft of hair that is the same auburn shade, which is distinguishable because only the skin on its face had been burned away.

            Its blue eyes were rimmed red, and Clarke wishes she were dead instead.

           

///

           It takes her four hours of trying to drag people down the hallway before she finally gives in to the fact that she will have to eat in order to have the energy to do this. She weaves a path around the bodies, wishing she could pretend she was in a forest wandering through flowers instead, or something else as artistically pretentious that would stop her from gagging at the fetid odor and cringing every time she accidentally stumbles and trips and steps on limp corpses, but there is nothing poetic to say or think about attempting vainly to put to peace innocents you have slain, nothing beautiful about gently dragging two fingers over face after face to lower lids over glassy eyes, as though these people, these daughters and sons, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, grandparents—as though they are merely sleeping. Most of them are not even distinguishable as human, with raw skin bubbled up and melted, faces contorted in grotesque pain, mouths gaping open in silent, never ending screams, some with bone showing clearly where the skin had been burned away, a few with merely skulls attached to their necks rather than—

 

///

           She has to stop thinking or she will be lost to the same hell she killed them in.

///

            Two months ago, if someone had told her she would one day sit alone in the emptiness, her wails echoing down a waxed hallway while she cradled a faceless baby garbed in a red dress that had undoubtedly once been white, and that she was the one who had snuffed out its life, she probably would have given a startled laugh. Because with a story that terrifying and implausible, what else did you do.

            She thinks she deserves to be in hell.

 

///

            They have been in Polis for only a few hours when Lexa finds it.  
            Her guards have carried her things into the palace, and she is in the process of opening the trunks her maps had been held in when she notices the little book.  
            Lexa has been too numb lately to be curious, but she feels her interest peak up when she remembers as she reaches down for it. Remembers lying in her bed of furs in a dark tent, and opening her eyes to see Clarke leaning over the desk, using firelight to see as she traced her hand over the open book. Lexa had stood then, ignoring the little sputtering of nerves at the bottom of her belly that Clarke always seemed to bring out. They had been alone in the tent for hours, Lexa having ordered her guards to stay out so they could strategize. Really, it involved a worried Clarke staring into the fire, and an agitated Lexa pacing the space.  
           

           _Lexa walked over to Clarke, who didn’t look up at her, too focused on the task at hand._  
_“What are you doing?” Lexa asked._  
_“Tracing an outline of your map. We don’t have a map this accurate, so I thought I’d take advantage.”_  
_Interested, Lexa moved closer to peer down at the sketch—partly because she just wanted a better look, but mostly because, although she would die before she admit it to anyone, she did not have the most exemplary vision. Costia, Anya, and Gustus been the only ones to know, apart from Lexa’s own parents. Costia had once tried to make her wear glass lenses over her eyes—but Lexa would not consent, because it made for a vulnerable target and that was a weakness a Commander could not afford._  
_Lexa’s arm brushed against Clarke’s, and she ignored the little shiver it sent fluttering through her, like_ glou byttrflai _in her belly. It made her feel young again, and it thrilled her as much as it terrified her._  
_“It is very good,” she softly notes._  
_To her pleasure, Clarke pressed her lips together in a small smile. “Thanks. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve drawn anything, but…feels a lot longer.”_  
_“Did you draw often when you were in the skai?”_  
_Clarke nodded, squinting at her drawing before she set down the charcoal and closed the book; Lexa stared at it a moment longer, before Clarke wrapped the binding on it. “Yes. Even when I spent a year in confinement, my mom snuck me supplies, and I drew on anything I could. Usually it was the walls, but sometimes she would get me some paper, and canvases a couple times. They’re my favorite.”_  
_Lexa lifted her brows slightly, determined not to show how eager she was. “I have extra canvases in one of the supply tents. We keep them nearby on the chance that need to make maps or send emergency messages we do not trust our messengers with (our messengers are not taught to read). I can ask a guard to retrieve them for you if you would like.” She gestured vaguely toward the opening of the tent, where a warrior was sure to be standing guard on the other side of the pelt._  
_Clarke smiled again, wider this time. It was the first time in days that Lexa had seen such a thing, and it made her heart beat faster. “How about we save that for after we win this war?”_  
_Lexa blinked at her, because she couldn't help but to become entranced at the way Clarke's lips moved to form words, and she was taken aback by just how beautiful this Skai-girl was. Then she allowed her lips to curve slightly upward. “That is a deal, Klark kom Skaikru.”_  
_Their locked gaze lingered, and Lexa wondered how long she could last, trying to push down the feelings that Clarke always drew unbidden out of her._

  
            Lexa’s eyes are stinging. She moves to sit on the edge of the bed and fumbles to untie the binding. Her fingers tremble as she gingerly opens the book, carefully peels back pages. There is drawing after drawing, sketch after sketch. There is a lump in Lexa’s throat as she sifts through them. So many are of the forest. The trees, the plants, the sunshine peeking past leaves. There are no drawings of space, of stars or of the sky at all. Lexa supposes Clarke had seen enough of that.  
            Lexa sees some vaguely familiar items. There’s a loose sketch of goggles and a Grounder spear. There is a charcoal rubbed into the paper in the form of some kind of contraption shaped somewhat like a human leg. There’s a coin sitting at the bottom of a cup, a fish swimming at the bottom of a small pool of water, a bottle of some liquid sitting on a shelf of other books, some kind of animal statue drawing, and another that looked strangely like a horse’s head perched atop a checkered blanket.  
            As Lexa continues on, the drawings grow more sporadic and intense. There’s a knife dripping with blood. Hands clutching what appear to be iron bars. A sleeping _goufa_ clearly distracted with nightmares or pain. A _pauna_ baring its canines in a ferocious roar. With an uncomfortable twist of her gut, Lexa recognizes a charcoal of Anya, her face matted in what seemed to be mud. Then Lexa’s heart skips a beat when she turns the page to see her own eye looking back at her.

            Her heart beats faster as she looks on and page after page, there are parts of her. There’s her war paint, outlined in charcoal. The back of her head, her braids and hair drawn in thin, intricate lines. The curve of her cheek and the mark of the _Heda_. Her sleeping form, almost indiscernible amidst mounds of fur—Clarke must have drawn her when she was resting, she realizes with an unpleasant swoop of her stomach. The last drawing is of her own lips—slightly parted, plump, and there.  
            There is a note hastily scribbled at the corner of the page, and Lexa is not used to reading such clearly written English after a lifetime of harsh Grounder scrawls, but after a moment, she makes it out.

**_Hodnes laik kwelnes_ **

            Just like that, Lexa is numb and bleeding again.

///

            Octavia must have taught her. Or someone. Clarke had been learning their language from someone. Or perhaps Lexa really was as repetitive as Clarke accused her of being.

             
///

            “I am sorry,” Lexa whispers in broken English, tears stinging her eyes, leading blistering trails down her cheeks, burning her lungs. She is curled into a fetal position in the center of her bed, her skin prickling with gooseflesh even though she is surrounded by warm furs. Her room is dark, and she has ignored both Indra and various Polis citizens knocking on her door.

            She clutches the sketchbook to her chest and hates herself for what she has done.

           

///

            Once, she used to wish she was not _Heda_. In fact, she used to wish it almost every day, that she had never been born. Now, she simply wishes she were dead, or that she could die right now.  
            She wishes she was weaker, and could have refused the deal and taken the man’s head off in one clean sweep of her sword, and marched back down to Clarke and fought at her side. She wishes she could have died with her, within those dark tunnels.

            Above all, she wishes she had never been Commander. So many lives had been lost because of it. Even if she saved her people, at what cost? Two hundred and fifty dead in Tondc. Anya dead. Gustus dead. Costia dead.

            _Clarke dead._

 

            Lexa wishes she were dead too.

 ///

            It is dusk the next day when Clarke pats down the dirt on the last body. They are all buried in a meadow outside a side door. She realizes that they belong outside. This was their earth. This was their ground, too. They deserved it. Clarke knows her friends didn’t deserve to die either (Fox had been carried out with her people upon leaving the mountain; she was to be buried with the other deceased members of the sky people outside their dropship), but they had asked for this no more than her friends had asked for their deaths.

            Blood must have blood, and the thought is sickening.

///

           The gun tastes like oil and solvent, a hard metal that is cloying and almost electric on the tip of her tongue. The barrel is cold on the roof of her mouth and somehow bigger than she thought, so she can actually hear her teeth chattering against the metal.

            The trigger feels greasy and an entire lifetime seems to expand as she fingers it, waiting for her heart to calm, waiting to hear the voices in her head again, the imaginary shrieks she had created for each of the dead children that were six feet under the ground with carefully wound bouquets of wildflowers clutched in their tiny blistered hands.

            Desperately, she thinks maybe she should use a rope, and she imagines the thick wiry braid wrapped around her neck, but that just reminds her of other braids, and she cannot bear to have any more thoughts of her in her head, so she just stops.

            She thinks maybe she could go find chemicals, pills, various medicines she could take. If not to end her, maybe just to pacify her, to give her a reprieve from the madness in her mind.

            She doesn’t even deserve that, not when there are those who no longer have their minds at all, thanks to her.

            She thinks maybe she should just pull the trigger.

///

            She reaffirms her grip, gently slides her thumb along the curve of the trigger, swallows and feels the barrel dip in her mouth slightly, jarring the teeth at the back of her jaws.

_“Do not be afraid, Clarke. Death is not the end.”_

///

           She sweats for forty minutes before the safety is clicked into place and the gun clatters on the floor and she cries and hates herself for everything, and being a coward was the least of it.

             _“I was wrong about you, Clarke. Your heart shows no sign of weakness.”_

_Shof op._

_Shof op._

_Shof op._

 

///

           Clarke sits on tile, her knees drawn to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. The shower had long turned cold, and where steaming water had once stung her, now ice water hit her skin like pellets.    

            Of two things Clarke is certain: one, her people are safe.   
            Two, she is a murderer.

///

 

            She tries not to close her eyes, because when she does, she can see stars. Stars, which terrify her when she thinks of how she watched her father sucked away into them. As a child, Clarke had always imagined floating as something peaceful, as though someone being floated would merely float away into the stars, appearing as though they were falling asleep as they died peacefully. Then she watched her father get sucked away, and the stars changed for her.

             _“_ _You get your stubbornness from your mother_

_And you know that_

_Hey, maybe if you had tried harder_

_You could have convinced me not to talk_

_Then you never would have had to watch me go.”_

           

            She rubs her fists into her eyes and immediately regrets it; her eyes sting, and she can see stars bursting beyond her eyelids.  
  
            She can see Atom, twitching in agony, tears mixing into skin that was already starting to crust into red wrath.

             _“Please_

_Kill me_

_Take my life_

_You’re so good at that.”_

           

            She can see Wells, can hear his laughter echoing in her head, the same laughter she had heard for so many years as a child.

             _“I can’t die knowing you hate me._

_I’m here for you._

_I came for you._

_I died because I’m here, I’m here because of you.”_

           

            She can see Charlotte, muttering in her sleep, fear in every crevice of her young face. Can see her hair in the wind as she plummets down the cliffside.

             _“You can’t slay your demons, Clarke_

_I tried and look at me_

_I slayed myself_

_To save you_

_And look at you now_

_You slayed them all.”_

 

            She can see Anya, falling like a stone when a bullet slices through her guts.

             _“Yu gonplei ste odon_

_My fight is over_

_I am over_

_I am death, and you, Clarke of the Skaikru, are the harbinger, the Commander of Death.”_

           

            She can see Finn staring at her with that haunting, manic glint in his dark eyes.

             _“Thanks, Princess_

_I know it was a mercy kill_

_But if it weren’t for you, I would still be here_

_Thanks, Princess_

_Thanks, Princess_

_I know it was a mercy kill_

_But after all, I would still be alive_

_If I hadn’t gone looking for you_

_So thanks, Princess.”_

           

            She can see Tondc, thick plumes of smoke rising to blanket the sky in heavy grey. Can see all the innocents of Mount Weather slumped in their own pools of radioactive blood. 

             _“Thank you, Skaikru._

_Thank you, outsider._

_Thank you for sacrificing us.”_

           

            She can see another leader, one with blood that is not her own smeared on her face, with eyes that pierce and lips that look soft enough to—

             _“I am sorry, Clarke. I truly am._

_You are a leader._

_You are a betrayer._

_You are a killer._

_Same as me._

_Tell me, Clarke. When you plunged the knife into the heart of the boy you loved, did you not wish that it was mine?_

_Do you now?_

_Who did you really save?_

_Not everyone._

_Not you.”_

 

///

            Clarke wishes she could close her eyes and sleep.

 

///      

            She had not buried Emerson. There had been no bodies that had even vaguely resembled him. She would not ever forget his face. 

           Clarke leans her head back against the wall and wonders when it would come for her. He would eventually. It was how life worked on Earth.

_Jus drein jus daun._

 

 

///

            The Mountain has fallen.

 

             Lexa wishes she were fallen with it.

 

* * *

 "You break me.  
Your pull is stronger than you push"

-Keep Me High by Adaline.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Part 3 should be out by tonight and involves Clarke wandering, getting kidnapped, running into the most unlikely of people, and Lexa realizing not all the dead are gone.


End file.
